Attention medical librarians, medical students, health science students, physicians and anyone with a strong interest in medicine, medical education and continuing medical education!

Here is an important resource for you. Health Sciences Online is a bonanza for those in need of, “authoritative, comprehensive, free, and ad-free health sciences knowledge” as the site puts it.

And no fear of junk being purveyed here. This project has the imprimatur of some of the most prestigious health organizations and medical societies in the world, such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and the World Bank. This is the Internet at its finest and is the latest in a series of noble international efforts to advance science and medicine such as WorldWideScience .

And yet again, the University of British Columbia and Canada in general have shown the world what can be accomplished in improving global health by a combination of Web know-how, a commitment to service to medicine and outreach to those in resource-poor settings and dedication to the ideal of the widest possible dissemination of solid information on important topics. Congratulations to everyone in this project and thank you.

HSO launched in September 2008. In its own words, “HSO provides free, online linkages to a comprehensive collection of top-quality courses and references in medicine, public health, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, basic sciences, and other health sciences disciplines.” It is a exemplar of leveraging the world of open access materials to create a model of e-learning that can benefit those in the developing world who lack access to learning materials that are a given in the industrialized and is a tool that can be utilized by schools and libraries in affluent areas as well, as any librarian in even the ritziest suburb or well equipped major academic center can attest when she tries to find continuing medical education materials.

This is no pet project of an idealistic few. Take a look at the heavyweights on the advisory committee and you are bound to be impressed. There is everyone from MIT (like the University of British Columbia, a leader in open access and especially in open learning technologies) to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Kudos to Project Director Erica Frank, MD for overseeing a mammoth, technologically challenging undertaking and for making such a magnificent contribution to the betterment of the lot of humanity and for doing so much to assist her professional peers, students and librarians worldwide. I would die happy if I were ever to accomplish half so much.

Now that I have my paean duly sung, what about the specifics of Health Sciences Online in terms of search?

Well, Health Sciences Online is still new and will no doubt grow exponentially as mainstream publishers realize its value in showcasing their wares to a huge audience of those interested in medicine and science. And many of the users of Health Sciences Online are going to be youngish medical school faculty and early career scientists who are going to be the decision makers in a few years in terms of major content purchasing decisions and contract signing in countries (e.g., India, China and Turkey) that are advancing economically, are going to pour money into higher education, basic and clinical research and that are poised to become world beaters in pharma and biotech. Therefore, if I were a sci/tech publisher or medical society I would immediately contact those behind Health Sciences Online and put at its disposal whatever free content I could. Do well by doing good sort of thing.

For instance, I tried my usual search term, “amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.” I got only 17 results, which is not very many. But all of the results had obviously been carefully screened and were useful. The lessons for the content providers here (hello Elsevier, Springer and Wiley-Blackwell) is that participating in such projects as Health Sciences Online is in your best interests vis-à-vis public relations and cost-effective ways to spread the word about your products.

Case in point: One of the results I got in my search on ALS was the article, “Oral, Pharyngeal, and Upper Esophageal Sphincter Motility Disorders” and right next to that title was the wording, “Nature Publishing Group.” I immediately had thoughts such as, “Good for the Nature Publishing Group for making its content available here. I already knew that its materials are world class and that impression is strengthened by its participation in cutting-edge projects like Health Sciences Online and when will Elsevier get a clue and start releasing its equally superb content in a like manner…” I then went to read the article (which was excellent) and while there read about the origins of the Web site in which it appears, “Our overall goal in creating GI Motility online is to provide a comprehensive resource on motility of the GI tract that meets the needs of all users – whether they are working at the bedside, the laboratory bench or in the research library. Raj K. Goyal, M.D. Reza Shaker, M.D.”

What an incredibly worthwhile enterprise Health Sciences Online is, what a promising future it has and what a boon it will become to fine people such as Drs. Goyal and Shaker who, via Health Sciences Online, will be able to reach via those in need of their expertise. And what warm and fuzzy feelings will be engendered in the hearts of medical people and librarians worldwide for those astute and altruistic publishers who provide content to Health Sciences Online. I made a point of clicking on the link to nature.com and from there to the page listing its many resources which is itself a model of Web design in the sci/tech publishing line and far better than its incredibly clunky Elsevier counterparts.

The point is that Health Sciences Online is a model of what Health 2.0 and Science 2.0 can be in terms of enabling everyone to work together: medical educators, academia, for-profit publishers, international institutions and NGOs to advance science. As I read the results on ALS I thought of the heartbreaking plea for basics on the disease on the ALS pages of Patients Like Me from a man in Nepal whose father was dying of ALS and how that man and the doctors there could have benefited from Health Sciences Online.

One of the outstanding features of Health Sciences Online is the helpful breakdown of the retrieved resources. For instance, for ALS I was told what was available in this fashion:
Other (7)
Lectures/Presentations (3)
Cases (2)
Courses (2)
Guidelines/Handbooks (2)
Articles (1)
Atlases/Image Galleries (1)
eBooks (1)

As word circulates of the arrival of Health Sciences Online on the world stage, we can expect to see an explosion of content on it from, one presumes, medical schools and medical societies providing podcasts of lectures such as those of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the sorts of useful PowerPoints of medical materials one finds on Vadlo, the open access materials we can access via Lalisio Literature, the access to the Deep Web we can find on Mednar, the lowdown on who is doing cutting edge research and garnering grants of ResearchScorecard and videos of sciencestage.com.

One quibble. Although Health Sciences Online features a PubMed search tool, Health Sciences Online itself does not appear to offer a clipboard feature that would enable users to save their PubMed results in the Health Sciences Online environment. Nor is there any mechanism to save the non-PubMed results nor is there any email this feature as there is in Mednar nor Mednar’s email alerts of new results. There is no RSS functionality. It would be nice, too, if Health Sciences Online could feature the links to trade publications such as feature in SearchMedica. There is a lot of good information in trade publications.

Health Sciences Online also lacks the quick and easy way to contact researchers that is such a nice feature of GoPubMed—that feature would enable researchers in the developing world (a primary target audience of Health Sciences Online) to network with those working in similar fields in richer countries (and enable researchers in richer countries to befriend and recruit the brilliant but obscure). I work on a grants and scholarship listing database and it would be nice if Health Sciences Online could feature such info. I receive poignant emails from medical people in countries such as Georgia and those of West Africa inquiring about funding and there is clearly a need for such listings via portals such as Health Sciences Online.

Not every tool can do it all, of course. Health Sciences Online is still in its infancy and is a pioneering project in health sciences education and medical information dissemination. Let us hope that every major medical school in the world jumps onto the bandwagon. It would behoove them to do so for reasons of mission and for name recognition purposes.

And certainly every medical library of any size should link to this valuable resource and public libraries should feature it on their health-related database pages.

Projects like this give me hope for the future. There are skillful people who are doing all they can in the cause of disease prevention and public health. That is good for all of us. Tuberculosis knows no boundaries.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 9:42 am and is filed under Health, Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.